


Wrong Metal

by Red Dragon (Red_Dragonn)



Series: Project Forging Chains [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: "im fine" megatron lies, (Bricks), Angst, make sure you read pfc first because otherwise this makes exactly zero sense, more mention of the whole thing with megs's face being cut off, one shot in the Project Forging Chains verse, set right after chapter 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 19:25:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15758145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Dragonn/pseuds/Red%20Dragon
Summary: Megatron had always liked his face.





	Wrong Metal

Megatron had always liked his face. 

Maybe he didn’t fit the attractive, mainstream ideal—his lines were too blocky and rough to be as conventionally attractive as, say, a flightframe or a dancer—but he’d always _liked_ the way he looked, a bit. 

It wasn’t that important to him, when he was younger. He was a miner. He mined. He spent most of his time in a dark shaft, and aesthetic concerns were by far the least relevant thing to his life. So what if his nose was bigger and blunter than a Seeker’s? It wouldn’t collapse if he got hit in the face with a rock, and that was more important. So _what_ if his jaw was too sharp, his helm too blocky? It _worked_ , didn’t it?

His face was _good_ , and it was his, and he was used to it and the way it worked. And he liked it. 

Later, he got a bit older and he got sent to the pits and he fought and he lived in the light as a spectacle. He put himself on display and he put his abilities in front of anyone who would pay to see it. His body was an attraction, his very existence a show. He fought and they cheered. 

He painted his face.

At first, it was a way of hiding. He did not like to kill. He didn’t want to kill. He didn’t have a choice. He painted thick, red lines under his eyes, all the better to hide any shameful lubricant. No one would bet on a bot that cried with every kill. And he didn’t want to take the chance. 

It took him a while to get used to the paint. It took him a while to get used to the Pits. 

He did, of course. Eventually. 

But he kept the paint. 

It was his, now. 

And he still liked his face, even after all of this. Patch jobs once a week, suggestions to make him ‘prettier’—but it was _his_ face. He liked it. He kept it. 

And then he was dragged into a cell and they took off his paint. 

He wasn’t so angry about that. He was angrier about the fact that they’d repainted him into a mining frame, something he’d finally left in his past. He was angrier that they’d forced him to kneel. He didn’t think to be angry about his face, not really. Not in specific.

And then they cut his entire face _off_ —

He barely ever got to see himself at that point, but when he did, he had to fight not to recoil in disgusted horror. His face was a wreck of damaged lines and broken cables and warped circuitry, optics sitting unnaturally wide without sheathing, face uncomfortably flat, caked in flakes of pale pink dried energon. He learned to stop looking at shiny metal. He didn’t want to purge before they did anything to him.

Eventually he gave up on that, too.

Eventually, he’d given up on almost everything.

They’d remade his face, of course, by the end of it. And most of the time Megatron didn’t notice it. But sometimes he could feel that it was the wrong face. He could see it. The arch of his olfactory ridge was smaller. The bottom of it less broad, less likely to put up to an impact. His cheeks, flatter. His chin pointed just a hint more. His optics were squarer, wider, an illusion cast by the paint he used inscribed directly into his flesh. 

And sometimes the metal of it just felt _wrong_. 

_“I wound up, uh, overriding the automatic controls of my expression to keep it locked where I wanted it for the end of the speech,” he lied._

_He smiled into the washroom mirror and then locked a pain sensor in a permanent off position and tried again. Finally, he managed an even smile that didn’t look like a grimace. He could feel the way the connections to his motor relays were wrong. He locked that sensor off, too._

 _He tripped over his own pedes in the dark, failed to catch himself in time, and bashed his entire face into a corner of the wall. He barely registered the impact on the tip of his nose. It took him until that morning, in the washrack, to see the deep score running diagonal across the center of it. He rubbed it out before anyone noticed. It was unnerving that he hadn’t felt it, but most of his face was numb by now. If he didn’t keep it numb, he thought he might claw it off of his head_.

_Orion leaned up on the tips of his pedes, pressing his lips to Megatron’s. They were warm, soft, gentle—Megatron could barely feel them. Later, he went into the washracks and pressed the back of his hand against his intake and carefully adjusted sensor after sensor after sensor until his mouth sort of worked the way it used to. Next time would be better. The wrongness in that section of his face almost didn’t even register after he’d tweaked the settings of the sensors enough._

_“I’m fine,” he lied, and Orion’s worried look faded away._

But it was his face, and he’d get used to it. 

He always did. 


End file.
